Character development felt force and I had a hard time relating to the main character. Tris at times feels very robotic that she does not feel the same way as what she is suppose to. I mean it's like the author is trying to force her into being one personality while this character is trying to edge away from it. Like, the author did not know really where she was trying to go with Tris and just didn't bother to clean up the messes. Or because of how large this book is it could have been hard to keep a great track over personality traits.

I did not enjoy the love part. The interest named Four felt weird. Since at the beginning of the story he is talked as the instructor so I assume a lot older. She tells how Eric is not that old , either. But "young" to me does not mean much it could mean looks young, acts young, is young. She probably did a well enough job telling me he was a young adult but I interpreted as youthful looking. Because it's commonly used to describe someone who is strong in character (may it be villain or hero).

I realize she is competing for a higher spot than her friends. That her friends are also her competition. But damn, these are some horrible and strange friend/competitors. The allies are a bit forced like she is frenemies and has a hard time connecting to the ones the author gives her. So, the author creates her some Dauntless born friends who connect well with her because they are all high-ranked like her. So in turn are not always jealous of her. Which I find weird because in this book dauntless born and the new initiates are competing against one another. I realize they are doing well but in the end they are also competing with her.

The villains are a group of fun-tastic children. They are the same age as her, which is around 16. They cannot for the life of them muster up true and hurtful insults. The way they insult makes me wonder if this book is suppose to be for younger ages. I mean when you are bullied it really does not matter what or how they say it. It can just hurt knowing they are attacking you. It's all I can think is why/how they are acting is because of this or the author did not know how to write enemies.

She is transforming into a Dauntless as she can relate better/well with her Dauntless-born initiates/friends/competitors. Which is really weird because at the end of the book she realizes she is not "dauntless" or "Abnegation" out of nowhere. I realize you as a person can change from many molds but why is she transforming into this likable person among the Dauntless then BAM! nothing? It's like the author was creating this character and then remembered she wanted to write a few more books on this girl so she had to re-mold her to fit into the next book.

Four in the story is a bit mixed up. I already spoke about him I realize this but his place in this story is just weird. Like he warns her that they are watching her. But they are not really watching her all that well. I mean, she gets away with a lot of things. The biggest trouble this girl gets into toward the middle is that she randomly decides to visit her brother in the faction he chose. I just feel like it was kind of pointless to warn her that they were watching her if they weren't really going to do anything. And, if they were really that hardcore watching her they would have been aware of their secret get togethers. I just feel like they were horrible villians lol.

Another thing is when her mother tells her not to outshine the others. So what does she do? Outshines them and still nothing happens to her (with the main "bad guys"). She is just now a target for the bullies to antagonize even one of her friends attack her in one part of the book because yknow they are jealous of her and all that wonderful jazz. During this they are groping her and whatever and she tells Four afterwards and she is like, "Well almost" she does not fully accept that they did touch her inappropriately? It's like it didn't really matter cos yknow they didn't take her virginity so it's all good. It is also makes it like she is awesomely brave/cool that she accepted what happened to her and is not bothered by it. When to me, you should be. But yknow, again, whatever!

She is also one of those characters who goes from meak to amazingly strong really quickly. I realize when you're thrown into something different someitmes a person makes it or breaks. But she just had to practice things a few times you never heard about her having to go in for extra training or whatever because she was Abnegation, they didn't do what she was doing as a dauntless. I mean, I know there are really people out there who just get things quickly. But she got strong and everything esle REALLY fast. The initiation is like only a month ...

The ending really bothered me...felt disturbing. I'm not going to really discuss that part beause no one likes to know the end. Unless you're me and sometimes will read the end of the book to see if you' like the ending pages enough to fumble through the rest of it. I think I should have done it with this book. Im sorry this review is really long but I just finished it so it's all still mumbled & jumbled in my head.

Oh and the Dauntless are a bunch of hooligans. The goths/punks/whateverfuk mixed into a group of people. Reading this they are suppose to be guarding the city. But the make like guarding the city is a shit job and you don't want THAT job. The ones you want are in the security watching tv screens all the time. They do not try to hint at what they are protecting each other from. It's not like the factions do not interact with each other. They don't "associate" openly but I mean they were visited by an Amity truck because they dropped off some produce or something. lt just was a watered down version of a tough guy from TV.

I did not enjoy the book and won't be reading the second one. Unless I am that desperate for a read. Other than that I cannot/won't say *not* to read it because you may get something out of it that I didn't get. I could not relate to Tris and her struggles because to me they felt fake, like she was just some whiney teen who had no real problems. And, when she did face real problems she had no human reaction to them and then pouted about her other problems.

She is afraid of being factionless. She is afraid of not belonging and being apart of the homeless population. Which I can understand if she was really at risk for being homeless. But she was excelling and had less of a chance of being kicked out of the initiations. It also bothered me that at the start of the book the author writes in a scary homeless man that Tris encounters. this really irked me. I mean I realize there are not ALWAYS nice people in the world. But it's also believed that the homeless are SCARRRRYYYY so yknow let's just throw more dirt on this belief.

And Im done talking about this book =). Check it out at the library or if someone lets you borrow it but I don't think anyone should waste cash on this book.